PS Vita Information

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Media Create's latest chart is full of Persona as the various games and bundles boogie their way onto the floor. Numbers aren't massive for any of them, but combined, it looks like an impressive haul of 29,500 on the Vita alone for physical sales, and I'm sure digital downloads were pretty high.

For reference, Persona 4 Dancing All Night sold 94K on launch for the Vita. Fate/Extella Link is the next major release, out 7 June in Japan.

Vita itself is stuck at just under 2,300 unit sales for last week, suggesting this is now the current floor with anything higher being good. Even if it goes lower, Sony's recent commitments to 2020 mean they're unlikely to pull the plug.

To highlight that, there's even a decent new hardware bundle as part of the Days of Play global promotion, with a silver Vita and 32Gb card for around £180, but only in Japan, although you can import one from Amazon Japan if you're quick!

Thursday, May 24, 2018

June 26/27(EU) are the next days for RPG Vita fans to take note of as Rainbow Skies finally lights up our skies. With a physical release via Play Asia, there is plenty to look forward to in the epic adventure, and just enough time to dust off your copy of Rainbow Moon for a dash of classic RPGing.

This game has been in development for around five years and looks very worth the wait. In Rainbow Skies players will enter a colorful and whimsical world, filled to the brim with friends, foes, dungeons, tactical turn-based battles, towns, shops, and everything else your role-playing heart desires.

PQube and IXTL bring the Muv-Luv and Muv-Luv Alternative visual novels in early June, landing in Europe on the 8th and the US on the 12th. In English for the first time, they tell the VN tale of an interdimensional love story that "takes high school romance on a roller-coaster ride through the depths of despair, culminating in a sci-fi grand finale."

UPDATED: Muv-Luv contains both the ‘Muv-Luv Extra’ and ‘Muv-Luv Unlimited’ storylines. It combines with Muv-Luv Alternative to complete a hefty 150-hour visual novel trilogy, the file sizes are 2.26 GB and 3.32 GB respectively, so might want to grab the physical versions if you're short on space.

According to the release, Takeru is your average unassuming high school senior whose entire world gets turned upside down one morning when he awakens to find himself in bed with the heiress to one of the world’s largest international conglomerates. She calls herself Meiya, and - despite never having met him before - she insists that the two of them are destined for one another.

This comes much to the chagrin of his childhood friend Sumika, the girl next door who’s always had feelings for him, who realizes that if she doesn’t act fast, she might just lose him forever. All of which begs the question: just who is Meiya? And do his feelings for Sumika run deeper than he thought? In the end, he’ll need to decide between the girl who’s been with him through thick and thin, or the stranger who claims they’re bound together by fate.

The games have been given a modern makeover, with updated graphics, interface, a new game engine and the first official translation!

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

You know it's a quiet week in gaming when a Caligula title hits the No. 1 spot in Japan. The updated PS4 Overdose edition manages the feat with just over 20K sales on the Media Create chart. For the Vita, Pro Jikkyou Baseball continues to fly the flag, sticking in the top 10, selling another 4,000 copies and taking the title to 83K retail sales. Which is why Japan will make Vita game cards for another year or so, after western card production ceases in 2019.

Hardware sales are flat on last week, with the Vita selling almost exactly the same at just over 2,200 units? Will 2K be the new 4K across the summer as Sony's portable drifts off into the distance and the bottom of my chart?

Talking in Japan, SIE's CEO John Kodera says he is considering various options around the PS Vita, while hinting at end of life in 2020 with the PS4 not far behind. Considering the Vita arrived around the same time as the iPhone 4S, and we're now up to the X model, that's a staggering length of time for a portable games console in the mobile annual-upgrade era.

Make of Sony's words what you will. A budget Vita, a PS4-badged remote player or will the PS5 come with a standard DualShock, but offer a 4K/5G Remote Player screen/controller to appeal to the Switch crowd?

Throw together Sudoku and some coloured blocks and you have Pic-a-Pix Color, a charming little puzzler from Lightwood that brings form and order to the Vita. As neatly explained in the tutorial, each puzzle, be it a simple 5x5 or the larger, more complex grids, is described by vertical and horizontal lists of the colours in each array.

Follow the clues and you build up a picture, so a row of five yellows might be the sand, five blues the sea, one blue, three browns one blue the hull of a boat, a vertical line of browns the mast and so on.

With 150 puzzles to solve, you can take your sweet time dissecting each one, working out the logic, or just start throwing down paint and see what comes up. Aside from size, there's no real order, so some early puzzles are quite complex with lots of white spaces that might get people stuck. Younger players might want to look for simpler puzzles with long lines of colour. Perhaps a difficulty rating for the larger grids would have been a useful addition.

When a row or column is "right" the descriptors light up, but it's only when you plant the last daub of colour that you'll know if you got it all correct. There is a tip feature to highlight wrong moves, and switching between inks and correcting mistakes is all handled neatly on the buttons, with touchscreen controls feeling too fiddly.

Larger puzzles can take a lot of time, with more colours to cycle through, but you can save your progress to come back to one later, ideal for commuters. Zoom would be helpful on the larger ones, and from a competitive perspective, it would be good if the timer didn't start until you put down that first square of colour, and a feature to copy and paste identical rows would also be welcome.

Otherwise, with its bleepy tunes, this is a fun diversion and brain teaser where its a pleasure to see what can be achieved with a few bright lines and some dark shadows. Future pixel artists could start out here!

Exceeding similar in concept to Tennis in the Face, 10 Tons' King Oddball is a physics puzzler spread over many hundreds of levels. Invading our world, King Oddball has to defeat troops and tanks by lobbing rocks at them, with his Anteater-like tongue. It swings like a pendulum and you have to time the launch perfectly to fling the rock into as many defenders as possible.

There are platforms, bounce pads, slopes, crumbling scenery and other obstacles as the levels get tougher. If you manage to splat three or more enemies in one go, then you get an extra rock, and if you can bounce one back to King Oddball, he catches it, all key tricks in the route to success.

In the background, the music sounds like it should be running alongside a silent movie, and there's almost that early-cinematic feel to the art-style and animation. Backgrounds are suitably tinged with doom and portentous skies, a shame there aren't a few cut scenes to add to the sense of theatre!

In later levels, some enemies are shielded, requiring multiple hits and there's nothing quite so satisfying as a perfect vertical bounce that hits the same tank or helicopter several times. Explosives can also wreak havoc on a level, pinging your already-used rocks around to inflict more damage.

A set of mini-games are unlocked as your progress with diamonds, grenades and other weapons to use, but it all sticks firmly to a very familiar format. A shame that's there's no greater experimentation. For example in the Secret Mustache World, repeat and mirror levels become painfully obvious. It would be cool if you completed a level with one hit, then some of the levels cleared instantly to reward you for being great!

King Oddball lives up to its name as a neat idea, somewhat overstretched, like his tongue. Still, its a fun puzzler with the One Rock Challenge the stand out in a title begging for a little more variety and creativity.

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Games are still coming to the Vita, no worries about that. I tweet or retweet about them as much as I can. You can also follow their progress through their Kickstarter updates, and various Tweet streams including #screenshotsaturday and many trailers.

Check out the latest progress for Valfaris and Shakedown Hawaii, both headed to Vita. It would definitely be cool if more Vita devs could show their works this way as it seems to be one of the more popular ways about finding out about games.

There are also hundreds of other games in development for PC, mobile and consoles, some of which it can't hurt to ask if they could produce a Vita version. Wonder if Pico8 games can be ported to Vita or just run natively on it somehow? That'd be a useful source of fun!

Riding some kind of fish through an eco swamp, the bugs here are massive - Therion’s trusty Sword will deal with them!

Friday, May 18, 2018

The usual suspects, Persona Dancing and Fate Extella continue to spit out videos like a baseball pitcher. Anyone would think these are the only games coming. Fortunately, Actill has a new clip of Musynx in action and it wouldn't be a Friday without a new obscure VN to be confused by, enter Cafe Cuillere by Takyuo.

Among the bad news, Vita dead stories and generally shrugging by anyone outside this happy little community, there's are some bright spots! In Japan, the Vita has sold 5,852,250 units as of last week, according to Media Create figures. Famitsu has it at 5.75 million for balance!

If sales trundle along at this year's average (4,600) for the rest of the year, it could crack six million before 2019/2020's inevitable retirement announcement. Who knows what is sold in Europe and America, and it doesn't really matter. By official estimates, around 12-15 million total puts it above the Wii U, the equally dumped-upon Dreamcast and many more.

*2011 - launch, three weeks on-sale, 2018 = 18 weeks

Yes, in both cold hard business and clickbait article terms, the figures are not great compared to PSP/3DS/Switch etc. But, Vita-lovers understand the innate value in the console, the near-perfect form factor, the blistering array of indie and Japanese titles, the social features that Nintendo even now can't provide, and for setting the template for Switch to follow.

All of which goes way beyond Sony's budget projections and forecast sheets, and feeble marketing comprehension. Which is why the company has surrendered the portable market away to Nintendo and is sneakily trying to support it through Sony Music. Sure, Sony must focus on PS4/PS5 and the limping PSVR to play to its strengths, but us Vita fans are still here cheering on the small victories into 2019 and beyond.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

I guess the success of Splatoon has compelled developers to go all Art Attack on their games. That's the impression with Inksplosion, but, unlike most art, the colour splodged all over the Vita's OLED is just for gaudy show and has no impact on the overall creation. Apart from, perhaps, being the visual equivalent of asking gamers to play a high-focus shooter while suffering a migraine?

A simple game, Inksplosion has you hold down the right trigger to shoot whatever random gun the level gives you, aiming with the left stick, and moving using the right. That's while dodging the oversize bullets coming the other way from four eight-bit-art-style creatures that live in each level. Each type fires a different weapon, some fast, slow, random or homing, all to be dodged.

Laser fields should be avoided, with your health bar depleting per hit and going back up when you kill an enemy. You can use the left trigger to slow down time and avoid the enemy bullets at the expense of some health, so only for use in emergencies.

I do like the bleepy tunes and the calm voice in the game, but while it looks cool in screenshot form, in action, its all a bit messy. It is easy to lose track of your "ship" and after a few levels chaos reigns. yes, you can turn it off, but in that case, what was the point? Most Vita games are fine in short bursts, but Inksplosion is only worth a few minutes play a day, with no grab factor to keep you going.

And that's it, really! The weapons take a second or two to figure out a quick tactic, and you will learn how best to dodge the laser fields in no time at all. Your multiplier goes up the longer you avoid getting hit, but it would be so easy to add a few more modes to make this game something more substantial.

Arena mode does away with the laser grids and speeds things up a bit, with rapid level switching, but not much. Making the score unreadable is not helpful! And tougher mode isn't really needed, for a game that throws silver and gold trophies at you, including a one-hour Platinum if you're lucky, as if to apologise for the lack of game. If you want an arcade shooter, try Son of Scoregasm that does all this a hundred times better!

Many thanks go to Ratalaika for bringing a steady stream of fun games to the Vita, with Devious Dungeon, One More Dungeon and the like helping keep the roster alive, but this is perhaps setting the bar a touch too low.

UPDATE: A recent patch allows players to disable the ink splats, basically the game's main feature. On the plus side, it makes gameplay a lot smoother and the game much easier to play, and finish in next to no time!

Post-holiday Vita sales drop to a new lowest ever of 2,229 in Japan's Media Create figures. But no panic, as hardware units halve across the board (Switch shed 22K sales in a week). We're now into the slow season, so will find out where the bottom is in the coming weeks, but Sony looks committed to at least another year of hardware production.

On the games front, Powerful Pro Baseball sticks in the top 10, approaching 80K proving that there's still plenty of buyers for well-known brands at least. These odd hits alone will keep Japan pumping out physical game carts long after Sony in the west gives up next year. That's as Sony can't afford to deny the likes of Konami and other publishers their seasonal hits, whatever the platform.

Over in Famitsu-land, the new Persona Dancing games, ahead of their entry in next week's chart scored a roundly predictable 8 across the board.

The most important people in today's big story aren't Sony's cack-handed executives, running to their lean-and-efficient business plan. Or the usual press doing the Vita is dead stories, but the developers (and publishers) that still support the Vita, the ones whose actual business is being affected.

This is what they had to say... (Latest at the top)

There will be a SkullPirates update coming tomorrow on the Kickstarter #PSVita don't worry everyone btw, it will still have the #PSVita physicals since it's being produced in Asia.

Regarding the PS Vita end of life announcement from today: We saw that announcement and do not believe that it will affect Bloodstained on the Vita. We will send an update if necessary. We are proceeding as planned with production and do not expect any issues.

Well, there's your answer as to whether or not any future games of ours will be on the Vita. Might have considered it if a physical release was a possibility, but definitely not viable without that. https://t.co/VhCPgLrfqC

Seeing a few people angry at the Vita cart production ending news. Despite the Vita not being very big outside of Japan, Sony still commited to 7 years of Vita game cartridge production in the US. That's way more than they could have done.

To cheer our #PSVita fans a bit, we want to let everyone know we still work on supporting the system! And that we worked a lot to get the #PSVita rights for a great adventure game! We will announce more soon ;) #vitaisland

Regarding the PS Vita port: our team were aware of the news but have already set up a schedule to produce the physical game and are proceeding as planned to bring the physical game into fruition! Rest assured we will be delivering the physical game to all backers.

This is one of those mornings! Wake up, check phone - Twitter activity spinning like mad! Which means either someone very famous has died or Sony is making another effort to kill off the Vita.

Turns out its the later, with news that western Vita game card production will cease at the end of March 2019, with all orders needing to be in by June this year. This is just the latest step Sony is taking to move on from Vita, and with reducing numbers of physical releases, it isn't much of a surprise. It looks like we have another year of game cards, then another year of hardware production, perhaps.

For the mainstream gaming press its time to run out yet another "Vita is dead" story (unironically unaware that 20 such stories in five years is sort of self-defeating). For Vita fans, it's another "Sony, you heartless bitch!" moment. But, Sony stopped caring long ago, and presumably, the economics are starting to count against us.

On the positive side (thinks a bit, scratches head, stares into coffee):

Japanese and Asian production continues, more VNs and the odd Asian English title to come, now here's Trent with the weather!

There's probably that one Sony employee in his little Vita card factory plugging away. He maybe spoke out of turn at a meeting in 2013, and Sony's punishment was to send him there, locked away from the modern world. He can now be freed!

Vita hardware and memory card production continues. Unless there's a further announcement to come. With Sony selling 3K to 5K in Japan a week, there's no reason not to.

Related to that, the number of western collectors is growing week-on-week, not in numbers that Sony cares about, but the growth is there for us to see (waves hello to the recent new Vita owners). Buyers won't likely care that physical games end in a year, with numbers massively down anyway.

It gives focus to any existing developers to get their skates on before the cut-off deadline. There's plenty of work to do still, and this gives every developer and publisher a firm time frame to work to.

Limited Editions could still continue, just in that weird meta-physical way. Boxes can still be sold, with audio CDs or vinyl soundtracks, packed with collector cards, plushies, toys, models, badges and so on. All gamers have to do is download the title. Sure reselling collectors won't be happy, but screw them! The sort of people that won't open a game box or toy are heartless morons!

The Vita collector/buying market itself will rise as people get onboard before Sony really, seriously, kills the platform off. (Hopefully, they aren't all heartless morons trying to snap up the "last-ever Vita game!" to resell at stupid prices.)

Third-party is a possibility. If there's money to be made, what's to stop Sony selling or outsourcing production to another company to continue to print games? If a game proves succesful, can't they make a production run in Japan?

In a perverse way, and while Japan will still get physical releases, this will push more developers to the Switch. Making Nintendo's baby even more successful, perhaps forcing Sony to respond with some new hybrid product! There's already been lots of chat about the VN market migrating to Nintendo. now it allows mature content. So, the pressure will grow from investors (who you can bet are pervy gamers by night) for Sony to do something.

So, the game isn't over, and never will be. Personally, being a perma-broke gamer, I've relied mostly on PSN sales and second-hand games for my Vita fun, so I'm not doom-and-gloom about this.

Online there's the usual amount of angst, but people will get over it when the world fails to end and we all move on.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

As announced back in March, deck-building game Monster Slayers is on its way to the Vita and PS4. Here's a PlayStation specific trailer, which is sadly exactly the same as the first one, a little Vita effort guys?

Hopefully being multiplatform, this isn't a game that will quickly vanish and close down its servers. More info soon I guess!

Monday, May 14, 2018

While it is crude to characterise some Vita games as bigger than others, the leading lights that have come our way; Minecraft, Spelunky, Va-11 Hall-a and others that stand out either critically and/or in sales terms are slightly more anticipated than yet-another-Metroidvania clone.

Pretty much the last of these outstanding releases coming to Vita is now dated for 22 May, price $15 and just a week away. Finally, thanks to the efforts of Chucklefish, it brings some fantasy farming fun (no offence Farming Simulator) after years of Harvest Moon denial (expect the PSP title).

Stardew Valley on Vita gets its own announce blog post, one on the PSN blog, an IGN news video, a Eurogamer news piece, generally appearing in lots of places the Vita doesn't usually get a mention. Among the comments, people are surprised to hear the Vita is still going

Vita owners will get version 1.2 of the game, missing out on the latest update, but expect some update later, minus multiplayer. It will be Cross Buy with the PS4 version, but no word on Cross Save.

I guess this concludes the excellent rush of must-have releases we've had recently, and while there's still plenty of ports and indies to come, it'll take some community effort to get any current titles ported due to both technical difficulties and the shrinking size of the market.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

The Vita's job (at least if Sony had ever released a HD version) today would be a one-stop solution for portable playing of PS4 games. Instead, Sony fumbled and fudged Vita into non-existence, leaving the wider company promoting the current Xperia phone as a very fudge-flavoured solution.

In semi-related news, Valve/Steam has announced a stream-to-mobile app, something else that a HD Vita would have excelled at! But hey-ho, it's only another missed opportunity as Sony falls behind the connected/hybrid era. For reference, Sony's mobile division is now tiny, with less than 4% market share.

Given Sony's PlayStation division has said no new hardware at E3, perhaps this is it for the foreseeable future until they can sort out a proper PS4 Remote Player. Of course, that leaves European and Japanese events (where Vita did better) for them to show off something new.

If you get a PS4 DualShock, presumably a spare that you don't mind getting roughed up in transit, a phone mount and so on, plus this expensive phone, and great WiFi or mobile coverage. On the plus side, they will throw in 12 months of free PlayStation Plus.

Even here, Sony's marketing fucks up the whole gaming concept spectacularly, with a tiny clip of a racing game in action around the Nurburgring - really, what's the point? (Yes, there's a longer clip, but it's not much better.)

This is not how you advertise PS4 games to a mobile audience. Most gamers probably have a PS+ sub, and will phone owners really rush out to buy a PS4, if that's the plan? Being God of War on a bus or Tomb Raiding in the museum would look more attractive.

Still quite a few games on the go for the Vita in Kickstarter world. Here's a quick catch up and status check from the developers that like to keep their fans in the loop. Lots more in the Kickstarter list with less than regular updates or where Vita was a less than firm goal (and that could have been years ago), so who knows!

Pato Box (Bromio) Hot off the press with some fresh news today: "We've been a bit quiet about the development of the PS Vita and Switch versions. However we would like to inform you all that we are just finishing the last features and we are aiming to release both in June this year."

Battle Princess Madelyn (CasualBit): End of April update. "Another month has passed, and lots of things have been bug fixed and polished - heavy emphasis on the first half of the game as we bug fix - updating the HUD, font, dialog boxes, etc. Oh, and the Kickstarter cover art has been completed!"

Heart Forth Alicia (Alonso Martin) From March Update" We've applied our efforts on pretty much every area of development. More placeholders have been replaced with final assets, several cutscenes have been fleshed out or polished as needed, and some others enhanced with new character animations. "

Soul Saga (DisasterCake): "Soul Saga will be ready by July 2018 (on PC)! July of this year will mark Soul Saga’s Kickstarter’s 5th anniversary and it’s a conveniently appropriate time to finally get you the humble JRPG I’ve been working on for so long. The desktop version will be released first and polish will be applied based on fan feedback. Information regarding console porting (likely through a publisher) will come after fan feedback on the desktop version of Soul Saga."

#SoulSaga: Working on some slummy parts of Dunhaven, capital city of Medonia and seat of the Guild Senate. There's a Cloudrail train that gets you around the different parts of the residential districts. pic.twitter.com/dagOgpd9QO

Sharin no Kuni (Tokyo Otaku Mode) From late April "Development and production of the Vita port will take longer, and we plan to have another update sometime soon detailing the outlook for that. Talking of Otaku Mode, they're providing the goodies for the Muv-Luv Kickstarter package that is now confirmed for an August release.

In the U.S., interest in the new God of War game saw the Vita collection shoot to the top of the portable downloads section. Cosmic Star Heroine is the only new release to muscle her way in among the usual old stagers. Not bad considering it only had a few days on-sale at the end of the month.

Europe stopped posting a Vita chart recently, just when things could be getting interesting. So, there's even less information for us to go on. Here's hoping the likes of Sir Eatsalot, Reverie and Rogue Aces made some sort of impact.

It's pathetic that sales figures are NDA'd by Sony, preventing developers from promoting their game effectively, and consequently the Vita if any of the above do manage to be a decent hit!

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

NIS America drops a new gameplay trailer showing off the RPG in action, The Lost Child. With a war between humans and demons, it's up to the Chosen One to save humanity!

That chosen one is Hayato Ibuki (who you just know is going to start out as a bumbling neophyte fool). He has to explore the layers between our world and the realm of the supernatural, finding clues to solve strange murder mysteries, and capture demons and fallen angels to join the cause!

In this gameplay trailer, we learn more about the dungeons, demons, and characters you'll meet on the way. The Lost Child arrives in June.

Golden Week definitely isn't what it used to be for hardware sales in Japan, but this year it managed to give the Vita a healthy spike to 5,500 units. That's up almost 1,000 on last week and is probably as good as life gets for Vita sales until Christmas, assuming Sony doesn't wave a PS4 Portable at us for E3.

In the Media Create chart, Konami's Powerful Pro Baseball 2018 is still the only Vita game in town, shifting 15,867 copies last week to move to a healthy 74,303 overall.

Next up are the Persona 3 and 5 Dancing Moon/Star Night games at the end of the month which should make a healthy impression on the chart.

Released on Steam a year ago, Finnish developers Kamina Productions first game is on its way to the Vita and PS4. Think Mr Tickle, if you remember the Mister Men and you have a clever way for a stretchy baby to steal bottles from various scenes by solving puzzles involving crocodiles, bombs, blenders, scissors and much more.

With a platinum trophy, looks like another great dose of tricky fun to go alongside the Vita's growing line-up of quirky diversions.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

After the excitement of an awesome April with Rogue Aces, Va-11 Hall-a, Sir Eatsalot and more, time to see what's still coming from the army of indie developers who still see value in the Vita.

New games raise awareness for both gamers and developers, who discover how dedicated the Vita fanbase is, are are a decent source of revenue. Hopefully a few more solo devs, small teams will pop up, and I'm definitely seeing more devs with games on other formats looking for porting help!

Now we're in the quiet patch of Spring, time for a look at what's happening with some of the titles on the release roster that easily takes us in 2019. With a few titles still to be revealed, there's plenty of work going on.

Some devs are being very quiet, others are happy to splash out the content. Here's a couple of the latest clips and images. Will add more as I dig them up.

Friday, May 4, 2018

What do you do after Zero Escape and Steins Gate? Something mad with cats and pants, naturally. A new visual novel from Mages heads, west thanks to PQube.

Punch Line sees Yūta Iridatsu as a pretty normal high school kid. Except he faints if he sees girls' panties. You never quite notice how frequent panty flashes can be until they ruin your day – he has to not look, or it's lights out!

When he one day finds himself in the midst of a bus hijacking incident, he meets the famed vigilante crime fighter Strange Juice, and something unexpected happens to Yūta – his soul separates from his body. Stuck in a ghostly incorporeal form, he finds that his penchant for panties has disastrous consequences.

While a ghost form lends itself to panty sightings galore, allowing Yūta to wander unseen, looking up skirts and causing shenanigans, there's a terrible catch: if he sees too many panties, Yūta gets too excited, faints, and somehow causes an asteroid to hit the Earth and destroy all life on the planet.

Thursday, May 3, 2018

The Minecraft developers at Mojang/Microsoft have put sterling support into this incredible game across every format imaginable for so many years. But with Minecraft 2 looming, and the capabilities of new machines likely to focus on more complex worlds and features, it looks like the updates are about to end on legacy versions.

A Minecraft.net post highlights that a host of older versions including Vita will stop getting updates after the next soggy patch (release date TBC). So, its a case of So long, and thanks for all the fish! But seriously, thanks to the developers for supporting the Vita version (which sold a million physical copies alone in Japan).

No doubt a few people will feel abandoned and betrayed, but they really need to grow up. Mojang has gone way beyond any normal level of game support, mainly as Minecraft went far beyond any normal game.

I still have my physical copy and dive into the updates from time to time. But, as the game that really got my son into computing in the wider sense and gaming, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Hope everyone in Japan is having a good holiday! In the run-up to Golden Week, Sony managed to shift a few more Vita units in Japan last week. Following up its good financial figures, Sony sold over 4,500 Vita consoles, according to Media Create for a useful little sales spike, in-step with last year's rise.

That was probably helped by the perennial arrive of Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball, which sold 125K on PS4 and a healthy 56K on Vita, topping the charts. Further down was a new Utawarerumono title from Aquaplus, shifting 8,500 units on Vita compared to 14K units on PS4. That's definitely valuable numbers for smaller publishers.

Golden Week itself has done little for gaming sales in recent years, but we'll see if there's a boost when the figures come back in a couple of week's time.

Last week's data here. Things go quiet now, until the end of May when the Persona 3 and 5 Dancing games hit the shelves, with a new trailer keeping up the constant media barrage.